It’s been a while since I posted a story about soccer. To be honest, I just have been so busy, I haven’t had the chance to talk about football!

But I had a quick look over my old posts the other day and noticed the one I wrote in August… You can read it here…. http://www.tomdoyletalk.com/2006/08/14/chelsea-miss-out-on-their-first-trophy-of-the-season/

At the very end of the story, I posted this:

“My predictions for the premiership this season are:

1. Chelsea
2. Man United
3. Liverpool
4. Arsenal
I think United and Liverpool will be very close, but Chelsea will walk away with it again. ”

So far, the only thing I got right is that Liverpool and Arsenal are where I’d said they’d be – BUT – Arsenal have 2 games in hand and are only a pint behind.

The race at the top is way to close to call right now, that will most likely go all the way to the wire. So far it hasn’t been the greatest season ever, but interesting none the less to see how many people have turned and no longer like Chelsea. Chelsea in my opinion have been exceptionally poor in the way they played this season, very non-entertaining, but none-the-less grinding out results.

For me as a United fan, I hope we can stick it out, even though I gave Alex fergusaon so much abuse at the start of the season about his team – he has yet again proven me wrong – but that’s why I’m here and he’s there! And I hope to God we can stick it out!!! Cmon UNITED!!!

Well there’s been a lot of talk over the last few days about Mourinho’s future. It seems there are problems in the dressing room. What they are have yet come to light.

I have to admit, I felt from the start of the season that Mourinho looked unhappy this season. He just didn;t seem to be himself at all. Even in interviews he conducted, he was no longer the sarcastic man that some of came to love. Some of us that is, because a lot of people thought it was arrogance and others knew he was just having a laugh.

However, this season his comments on games he lost made him look like a sore loser and his arrogant sense of humour had all but disappeared.

It will be huge loss for the Premiership if he leaves. His skills as a manager and his skills at media management have been second to none for the last couple of seasons. I hope he can sort it out and give us some more for many seasons to come.

I know I will loose a lot of votes when I voice my opinion on the above mentioned, but I can’t help it… he is seriously getting on my nerves.

Ok he has a great scoring record so far for United this season, but then again Van Nistelrooys was better.

Yes, I do agree that Louis suits Man Uniteds game a lot more than Van Nistelrooy did in his latter days, but I still can’t shine to his terrible performances.

I find him poor when receiving the ball and he loses it more than he does something useful with it. Andy Cole was bad to watch in his early days, but at least he was making chances, Saha just isn’t.

Fergie’s gotta start looking for a quality striker in the transfer window or I’ll probably end up watching Liverpool instead!

Well as I expected, Arsenal proved to be a step too far for Uniteds youngsters on Sunday. I always thought that this would be United’s first crunch game of the season and that it would be hard for United to overcome Arsenal’s talented side.

Arsenal who haven’t had a great start to the season were much better on the day and thoroughly deserved the win on Sunday. Yet again, I felt United were poor in defence and upfront.

United just weren’t at the races. Rooney still looks like he is far from match fitness, Scholes was kept well under control by Arsenal’s midfield, Wes Brown fell asleep a couple of times and our stand in keeper was, well, a stand in and it showed.

So where do we go from here? Well let’s hope we can pick it up again, but I don’t think we’ll ever get a season again where we could have been so far ahead of our main rivals!

Manchester Uniteds 5th game of the season turned out to be one of their biggest challenges yet. United were 1-0 down within 21 minutes after a great finish by Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Although United looked the better team, Celtic looked like they wanted to win this game more than United did.

It took only 9 minutes before United were gifted with a dubious penalty, when Boruc was deemed to have fouled Ryan Giggs in the Celtic box. Louis Saha took a great penalty to level it at 1-1. My man of the match Paul Scholes, created United’s second goal on 40 minutes, with a great pass to Saha that left him with only the keeper to beat. But not long after this Shunsuke Nakamura scored a beautifully taken free kick to level it at half time.

In the end United were gifted with their third goal when Gravesen mislayed his pass into the path of Paul Sholes who with ony three touches created another great pass to Saha who was denied by Boruc only to be followed up by Solskjaer. The only other player that caught my attention all night was Boruc who had a tremendous game.

All in all, I think this shows, that with all the hype surrounding Man Uniteds great start to the season that this is only because they have yet to be tested by a top team.

United were poor at the back and although I believe Saha suits Uniteds style of play better than Ruud, he didn’t seem very convincing in front of goal. Rooney looked tired and unfit while Michael Carrick looked totally unconfident. His passes were simple and we never saw any match winning passes or even attempted passes from him.

Although Arsenal have had a very poor start to the season, I think the game against United on Sunday will be Uniteds biggest test so far this season. I expect Arsenal to come out with all gun blazing as they always do against United.

I think this is where we will see if United are true contenders for the premiership this season.